Towards night I heard the sound of several steps approaching the chamber. The bolts were undrawn, and Lady Sympathina, at the head of the company, entered, and announced their names.

'Bless me!' said I, involuntarily; for such a set of objects never were seen.

Sir Charles Grandison came forward the first. He was an emaciated old oddity in flannels and a flowing wig. He bowed over my hand, and kissed it—his old custom, you know.

Lady Grandison leaned on his arm, bursting with fat and laughter, and so unlike what I had conceived of Harriet Byron, that I turned from her in disgust.

Mortimer Delville came next; and my disappointment at finding him a plain, sturdy, hard-featured fellow, was soon absorbed in my still greater regret at seeing his Cecilia,—once the blue-eyed, sun-tressed Cecilia,—now flaunting in all the reverend graces of a painted grandmother, and leering most roguishly.

After them, Lord Mortimer and his Amanda advanced; but he had fallen into flesh; and she, with a face like scorched parchment, appeared both broken-hearted and broken-winded; such a perpetual sighing and wheezing did she keep.

I was too much shocked and disappointed to speak; but Sir Charles soon broke silence; and after the most tedious sentence of compliment that I had ever heard, he thus continued:

'Your ladyship may recollect I have always been celebrated for giving advice. Let me then advise you to relieve yourself from your present embarrassment, by marrying Lord Montmorenci. It seems you do not love him. For that very reason marry him. Trust me, love before marriage is the surest preventive of love after it. Heroes and heroines exemplify the proposition. Why do their biographers always conclude the book just at their wedding? Simply because all beyond it is unhappiness and hatred.'

'Surely, Sir Charles,' said I, 'you must be mistaken. Their biographers (who have such admirable information, that they can even tell the thoughts and actions of dying personages, when not a soul is near them), these always end the book with declaring that the connubial lives of their heroes and heroines are like unclouded skies, or unruffled streams, or summer all the year through, or some gentle simile or other.'

'That is all irony,' replied Sir Charles. 'But I know most of these heroes and heroines myself; and I know that nothing can equal their misery.'

'Do you know Lord Orville and his Evelina?' said I; 'and are not they happy?'

'Happy!' cried he, laughing. 'Have you really never heard of their notorious miffs? Why it was but yesterday that she flogged him with a boiled leg of mutton, because he had sent home no turnips.'

'Astonishment!' exclaimed I. 'And she, when a girl, so meek.'

'Ay, there it is,' said he. 'One has never seen a white foal or a cross girl; but often white horses and cross wives. Let me advise you against white horses.'

'But pray,' said I, addressing Amanda, 'is not your brother Oscar happy with his Adela?'

'Alas, no,' cried she. 'Oscar became infatuated with the charms of Evelina's old governess, Madam Duval; so poor Adela absconded; and she, who was once the soul of mirth, has now grown a confirmed methodist; curls a sacred sneer at gaiety, loves canting and decanting, piety and eau de vie. In short, the devil is very busy about her, though she sometimes drives him away with a thump of the Bible.'

'Well, Rosa, the gentle beggar-girl,—what of her?' said I.

'Eloped with one Corporal Trim,' answered Sir Charles.

'How shocking!' cried I. 'But Pamela, the virtuous Pamela?'——

'Made somewhat a better choice,' said Sir Charles; 'for she ran off with Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, when he returned to the happy valley.'

'Dreadful accounts, indeed!' said I.

'So dreadful,' said Sir Charles, bowing over my hand, 'that I trust they will determine you to marry Montmorenci. 'Tis true, he has lost two teeth, and you do not love him; but was not Walstein a cripple? And did not Caroline of Lichfield fall in love with him after their marriage, though she had hated him before it?'

'Recollect,' cried Cecilia, 'what perils environ you here. The baron is the first murderer of the age.'

'Look at yonder blood,' cried old Mortimer Delville.

'Remember the bandit last night,' cried old Lord Mortimer.

'Think of the tremendous spectre that haunts this apartment,' cried Lady Grandison.

'And above all,' cried the Lady Sympathina, 'bear in mind that this chamber may be the means of your waking some morning with a face like a pumpkin.'

'Heavens!' exclaimed I, 'what do you mean? My face like a pumpkin?'

'Yes,' said she. 'The dampness of the room would swell it up like a pumpkin in a single night.'

'Oh! ladies and gentlemen,' cried I, dropping on my knees, 'you see what shocking horrors surround me here. Oh! let me beseech of you to pity and to rescue me. Surely, surely you might aid me in escaping!'

'It is out of the nature of possibilities,' said Lady Sympathina.

'At least, then,' cried I, 'you might use your influence to have me removed from this vile room, that feels like a well.'

'Fly!' cried Dame Ursulina, running in breathless. 'The baron has just returned, and is searching for you all. And he has already been through the chapel, and armoury, and gallery; and the west tower, and east tower, and south tower; and the cedar chamber, and oaken chamber, and black chamber, and grey, brown, yellow, green, pale pink, sky blue; and every shade, tinge, and tint of chamber in the whole castle. Benedicite, Santa Maria; how the times have degenerated! Come, come, come.'

The guests vanished, the door was barred, and I remained alone.

I sat ruminating in sad earnest, on the necessity for my consenting to this hateful match; when (and I protest to you, I had not thought it was more than nine o'clock), a terrible bell, which I never heard before, tolled, with an appalling reverberation, that rang through my whole frame, the frightful hour of One!

At the same moment I heard a noise; and looking towards the opposite end of the chamber, I beheld the great picture on a sudden disappear; and, standing in its stead, a tall figure, cased in blood-stained steel, and with a spectral visage, the perfect counterpart of the baron's.

I sat gasping. It uttered these sepulchral intonations.

'I am the spirit of the murdered Alphonso. Lord Montmorenci deserves thee. Wed him, or in two days thou liest a corpse. To-morrow night I come again.'

The superhuman appearance spoke; and (oh, soothing sound) uttered a human sneeze!

'Damnation!' it muttered. 'All is blown!' And immediately the picture flew back to its place.

Well, I had never heard of a ghost's sneezing before: so you may judge I soon got rid of my terror, and felt pretty certain that this was no bloodless and marrowless apparition, but the baron himself, who had adopted the ghosting system, so common in romances, for the purpose of frightening me into his schemes.

However, I had now discovered a concealed door, and with it a chance of escape. I must tell you, that escape by the public door is utterly impracticable, as a maid always opens it for those that enter, and remains outside till they return. However, I have a plan about the private door; which, if the ghost should appear again, as it promised, is likely to succeed.

I was pondering upon this plan, when in came Dame Ursulina, taking snuff, and sneezing at a furious rate.

'By the mass,' said she, 'it rejoiceth the old cockles of my heart to see your ladyship safe; for as I passed your door just now, methought I heard the ghost.'

'You might well have heard it,' said I, pretending infinite faintness, 'for I have seen it; and it entered through yonder picture.'

'Benedicite!' cried she, 'but it was a true spectre!'

'A real, downright apparition,' said I, 'uncontaminated with the smallest mixture of mortality.'

'And didn't your ladyship hear me sneeze at the door?' said she.

'I was too much alarmed to hear anything,' answered I. 'But pray have the goodness to lend me that snuff-box, as a pinch or two may revive me from my faintness.' I had my reasons for this request.

'A heroine take snuff!' cried she, laying the box on the table. 'Lack-a-daisy, how the times are changed! But now, my lady, don't be trying to move or cut that great picture; for though the ghost comes into the chamber through it, no mortal can. I know better than to let you give me the slip; and I will tell a story to prove my knowledge of bolts and bars. When I was a girl, a young man lodged in the house; and one night he stole the stick that I used to fasten the hasp and staple of my door with. Well, my mother bade me put a carrot (as there was nothing else) in its place. So I put in a carrot—for I was a dutiful daughter; but I put in a boiled carrot—for I was a love-sick maiden. Eh, don't I understand the doctrine of bolts and bars?'

'You understand a great deal too much,' said I, as the withered wanton went chuckling out of the chamber.

I must now retire to rest. I do not fear being disturbed by a bravo to-night; but I am uneasy, lest I should wake in the morning with a face like a pumpkin.

Adieu.